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4 Responses

Are the other rankings for that keyword(s) bouncing as well, or is it just you? If everyone is bouncing, Google could be tweaking the algorithm or the keyword could be evaluated different ways. For example, I'm seeing Google treat more keywords as having local implications (especially since "Venice"), but they seem to be fine-tuning that week to week.

(2) You've got a very large index or some issues with duplicate content. Sometimes, I see a page get re-crawled (say, from an XML sitemap), rank well for a few days, and then drop as Google re-crawls more of the site.

(3) You're hovering on the border of a link-based penalty.

Fortunately, these are different enough that you can probably tell which one is most likely by digging into your own index and link profile, as well as Google Webmaster Tools.

Thanks for the response, some really interesting ideas. It looks like it's just our site that is bouncing around in the serps.

I think point 2 is probably the most likely explanation. Although the site was built with SEO in mind, so the pages are all unique and with a good amount of content, we have a few issues with trailing forward slashes, which could be creating a duplicate content problem.

Basically the site is divided up into 9 sections - 7 of those sections are fine and ranking well, but 2 of them are bouncing around. Of the 2 that are bouncing around we have done some link building for just 1 of the sections.

I'll have another dig around in webmaster tools. If you have any other ideas in the meantime they'd be much appreciated!

Hmmm... that is strange, especially if you haven't pushed any link-building to that section. Unfortunately, the duplicate content aspects are really tough to speak to without seeing the site/page. One easy spot-check I do is to take the page title of the section, let's say it's "Section Title" and search the index within your site, such as:

site:example.com intitle:"Section Title"

That will show you if copies are being indexed, and it's a really easy place to start.

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